Metal Detecting Forum

Can someone tick off some of the best machines for use on the beach please?

I like my Whites MXT for relic hunting and am thinking either just use that for the beach or maybe get something specialized. I intend to hunt on touristy beachy areas in and around the surf line, primarily on the beach blanket line. I plan to hunt in and around the Florida beaches and N Carolina beaches. No underwater work. No real budget concerns, just a good machine for that type of use.
Am considering the Minelab Soverign GT, and a Tesoro Sand Shark. What other should I consider, thanks!

I live on the coast and hunt the beaches regularly. For a water machine I use my AT-Pro with no problems even though I know there are better machines. Now for the beach I just use my land machine and make adjustments to make the machine run quite. I use the VX3 w 950 conc. and run salt beach program. I'm not familiar with the MXT but I know it's a good machine so you should be able to use it. Also the dry sand isn't that much different than soil. Wish I could be of more help.

For the beach I prefer my XP Deus. You can switch between different programs. There are two programs for metal detecting on the beach: the dry-beach program and the wet-beach program. This machine finds very deep and you can find very small things too.

Here in the mineralized sands of San Diego I use a Minelab gt with a 12x15 sef coil. I hip mount the box, use Sun ray pro gold headphones and a diamond head ss scoop. I also use a 180 meter( to help ID targets) and a propointer( to recover small pieces of junk quickly). I believe this is probably as good as it gets for wet (and dry) sand in this area. However, I am very interested in the other responses to this question. One day I would like to try a CZ21 but for now I'm trying to get proficient with the gt. Any input on how I could improve on my "system" would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Jim

We have huge beaches up here on Lake Michigan, they dont get the year round traffic, and its fresh water of course, so it demands a differrent style of hunting. In season, when they fill up fast, a fellow has to get there early and be out by shortly after sunup. The speed of the F series Fishers make them a very capable machine to cover a lot of ground in a hurry. I sure we would all agree the best beach machine depends upon the situation. When a fellow has to cover a lot of ground fast, run and gun style, smoke jumping, have a look at these.
Mud

Hi popsmoke,i have an mxt and also a sovereign.The sovereign will do much better on the beach in the wet sand....minelabs multi frequency machines cope as well as anything on the market,even dedicated salt water machines.The mxt is great for the dry sand but looses a little on the wet although it's still useable up to a point.The mxt however has the advantage inland when there is a lot of iron about.....if you have both machines you've pretty much got every detecting scenario covered.
Neil.

High,
For your style of detecting I would avoid a detector that is meant for underwater/diving work.
These detectors most always have a non-buoyant(heavy) coil, that is a pain in the butt to use on dry land, cause it makes the detector nose heavy and tires you out pretty fast.
If you want to cover a lot of ground fast, get a chest or hip mounted control box and use a large coil.
I would go to a good detector shop and try several different models/makes until you find the one that you feel most comfortable with.
Don

All around wet or dry sand the Sovereign GT is tops.
But for dry sand only.
The Tesoro Cibola is a coin killer and will find gold with the best of them. Very fast reset and you will get sick of digging beach pennies 8 to 10" inches
You can really move right along with this light wight machine. Good gold operating frequency of 14.3 khz. Just turn it on set the threshold and set the discriminate to except fine foil (same conductivity as gold) and your good to go at 1/3 the price of the Sov.
Hope this helps.
Dog

After a short time with an entry level machine I realized it just wasn't gunna work on the beach. So I did my research on "the best beach machine" and the minelab gt seemed to be a clear number one choice. Forums,You tube videos, and my local dealer all seemed to point to the gt (for the beach) Especially for mineralized, wet sand. Apparently the BBS developed for military use gives this machine an edge over other (VLF) MD on the beach. It's hip mountable, has a variety of good beach coils to choose from, and has tones for audio ID, as well as various meter options. After reading the gt forums for some time now, it seems clear that this is at least one of the best choices for beach hunting. (It also seems that the gt can excel in other areas such as deep silver in iron.) Just my 2 cents from the things I've read.

The only hesitation I have about the Sovereign GT is that it is not waterproof (and thats not good for beach hunting) and the fact that sand works its way into the control box, which will eventually have a negative effect on the detector.

I personally feel if you're willing to shell out over $1000 for the GT, just save another $400 and get the Excalibur and you never have to worry about sand or water again.

The only other "get it wet" salt water detector I'd recommend in the VLF line is the CZ-21, which isn't much mor expensive than the GT and less than the Excalibur. I have found it to perform as well as the Excal. By that I mean it runs stable in salt water and is capable of hitting small good targets at depth. The Excal does have after market coils that increases its depth.

On PI detectors, don't ignore the Detectorpro Pulse. Its incredibly lightweight, senstive to small gold targets, and you can get it wet (just don't dive/snorkel with it). It does bleed two 9 volt batteries dry after about 8 hours, but it is overall a great PI detector that you can swing all day without getting tired.

I have a Sovereign GT with an S-12 coil, an M6, MXT Pro, PI Dual Field, and a Spectra V3i but when I'm hunting the dry beach sand, I grab my modified IDX Pro with a BigFoot coil. Light, quiet, and covers a lot of beach with each sweep. IMO the best dry sand detector combo. In the dry, I feel it's all about coverage and not so much on depth.